The film sees a gang of old pals go on a pub crawl in their home town only to discover that aliens have cloned the locals.At the end, we see the wrapper of the chocolate chip Cornetto, it’s green - the traditional colour of aliens.The original blue Cornetto (the colour of a cop car’s flashing light) appeared in 2007’s Hot Fuzz.And the red, strawberry flavour appeared in Shaun Of The Dead, the hit zombie comedy that launched them all on the road to movie stardom in 2004.With that in-joke finally exhausted, we thought it was the perfect time to sit down with Dorset-born Edgar to chat about British comedy, film-making, geeky references and his next big project – Marvel superhero movie Ant-Man.

How autobiographical was The World’s End?

The first five minutes of the movie, the flashback to 1990, was somewhat inspired by me attempting and failing to do a pub crawl in my home town when I was 18.I think I had this misguided idea that by having a pint in every pub in my home town I would somehow conquer it. So I think the fact that I didn’t make it must has nagged at me to eventually make this film 20 years later.

The first thing that strikes the characters in the movie, is how much the town has changed since they were teenagers. Is that something you’ve experienced going back home?

Hot Fuzz was shot in my home town, so I had the experience of that rather vividly, in the way that when you leave your home town, you see that it’s changing and there’s nothing you can do it about it.You kind of want it to remain like your childhood idyll but that’s never going to happen.So it’s about the bitter-sweet feelings of going home and also drifting away from friends. People who, when you teenagers, you thought you’d be friends with forever but then you naturally start to drift away.Actually, I’m still in contact with my most of old friends. The people who came on the original pub crawl came to the premiere. That was an interesting experience.I think they were pleased that our story had become this apocalyptic adventure.

Did the recognise anything of themselves in the film?

There are a couple of lines that are verbatim. There’s the bit in the car where Paddy says: “I put this song on a tape for you” and Simon says: "This is the tape!” That actually happened. That’s was the thing about this movie, it was great fun making an end of the world movie with killer robots but make it personal.With writing people say write what you now and it’s great to do that but in a genre film.

“I liked the idea of having this massive fight where it’s acceptable to smash a 16-year-old’s head in. Only in the confines of the movie obviously.”

Apart from Cornettos, what links The World’s End with Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz?

They are all films about growing up. In Shaun Of The Dead, he has to become a responsible adult. In Hot Fuzz, there’s two things going on. Nicholas Angel has to learn to be a human being. And Nick’s character Danny Butterman has to learn that life is not like the movies. In this film, it’s about learning that you’re not a teenager anymore. Simon’s character is trying to go backwards in time, it almost like he’s attempting time travel through booze. He thinks that by getting all his friends drunk they might regress into being silly teenagers again.

In this film Nick and Simon have almost swapped roles. Was that deliberate?

Nick is playing a straighter character than he usually does. In the ten years since we made Shaun Of The Dead, Nick has become a husband and a father. I think people assume he’s like he was in Shaun Of The Dead, which isn’t true.So I wanted to do something that reflected the adult side of Nick Frost. It was nice having characters who you know from all this earlier films and have them play their age. Because I think too frequently you see films and TV shows where actors pretend to be 26 forever.Usually, actors who in reality are fathers and husbands pretend to be single because it’s just easier. We wanted to reflect their characters. Me and Simon have a thing, we did it in Spaced, that’s there’s always younger upstarts.In this, the first villains you meet are all teenagers. I liked the idea of having this massive fight where it’s acceptable to smash a 16-year-old’s head in. Only in the confines of the movie obviously.

That fight sequence looked really realistic. Was it a difficult scene to shoot?

It was really fun shooting that fight. Because all the stunt performers were actual teenagers. Everybody trained really hard and prepped. I think you can tell that the actors are doing as much of the stuntwork as possible because the camera is right on them.They all trained really hard. I only left Eddie [Marsan] out because he’s a coward in the film. In reality, he can fight. He boxes and stuff but in the film he doesn’t much action.They are all good at it. Ros [Rosamund Pike]is great, Paddy Considine can throw a mean haymaker, Simon is good at the choreography. Nick, when he finally lets rip, really erupts. He’d just finished a dance film called Cuban Fury, which is out next year but was shot before The World’s End. So he had been doing salsa dancing for like six months before we started filming.That really helped with the fight scenes. His fight with the two stools on his arm is my favourite bit of the movie.

Your films seem very rewatchable, in that there are lots of details and in-jokes that you don’t pick up on a first viewing? Is that something you aim for?

Ever since we did Spaced on Channel 4, we realised that people would watch it several times. The fans would watch it a lot.I think you can never underestimate the audience, you can put lots of little details in there. You can enjoy the film on a first watch but if you watch it a couple of times there are a lot of things that are hidden like symbolism. With this film, we put little things in the pub scenes. There are hidden numbers all the way through the movie so you can count the pubs from one to twelve. Hardly anybody would spot that on a first watch.The opening sequence, the 90s prologue, basically gives you a blow by blow account of what’s going to happen later in the film, including where some of the characters are going die. We love doing that sort of stuff.

SMACK HIM!: Frost runs out of steam mid punch [Universal Pictures]

There are lots of British references in the movie. Was there any pressure to let Americans in on the jokes?

The irony is that it did really well in the States. It opened at number four, which for a film shot in Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City is amazing.It’s the most British of the three but the American critics really liked it. I think if the characters are universal then any reference points don’t matter.International audiences find it funny that the British respond the apocalypse by getting hammered.In a way, our films have done well because we didn’t try to make them Americanised. They respond to them because they’re British. It’s strangely exotic to them.Recently, I did a triple bill screening in L.A. at the Egyptian on Hollywood Boulevard and I can’t tell you how weirdly proud it made me to see scenes shot in Crouch End or Somerset or Hertfordshire in the middle of Hollywood. It’s insane.

And you didn’t even do the Richard Curtis trick of casting an American as the love interest…

You do make your life a lot easier if you cast an American actor. Then again Martin is the Hobbit, Simon is Scotty in Star Trek and Pierce Brosnan is Bond. These are iconic British actors.

Old sci fi movies seem to have had a big influence on the film..

Yeah, it was all those films of that time that used to be on TV when I was growing up.Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is an obvious one. Then there’s Village Of The Damned, Quatermass, Avengers, Doctor Who. There was a lot of what I call the quiet invasion films where it’s slowly happening around you before you realise it. So it’s not about aliens coming down and trying to blow up earth, it’s about them invading from within. And that seemed to fit.Me and Simon wanted to do something about the experience of going back home and noticing something has changed. Is it me or is it the town? In the movie, it’s both. We liked the idea of the homogenisation of chain culture, that bars, restaurant and shops could be attributed to aliens. It’s not Wetherspoons, it’s aliens!

It’s still a comedy though. Is that how you think you'll always approach film-making?

Even within a comedy you can tackle serious themes and not in a flippant way. There are elements with these characters that can be emotional because we’re being honest about them.A lot of people can see themselves in the movie or be like “I know that guy.”

Is that an approach you and [co-writer] Joe Cornish are bringing to Ant-Man?

It’s definitely character-based, even though there are crazy, insane, sci-fi action ideas in there it still has it’s feet on the ground in that it’s about characters with real world problems.

Is that British voice in there?

I think it’s more of own sense of humour brought to that world. But in a way, I grew up on those Marvel comics and they’re usually funny. The distinguishing characteristics of Marvel comics over DC comics is their sense of humour. It’s the house style. And that’s something that inspired me in a way so it’s nice to come full circle and actually make one.

Would you like to make another film with Simon and Nick after you’ve finished Ant-Man?

I’d love to. It gets tougher to make films in this country. I’m very proud of this movie but it wasn’t a doddle to make by any means. Even on a weather basis, it’s tough. I think in the ten years since Shaun Of The Dead, the weather has definitely got worse. I can scientifically prove it by doing three shoots in the last ten years. It got progressively colder.But I love making films in this country and I hope to do more in the future. Especially as I’m making my next film in the US it would be nice thing to try and flip flop. Do one in the States then one here.